Teamsters go local to snarl expansion By Reuters
© Reuters. FILE PHOTO: People protest in support of the unionizing efforts of the Alabama Amazon workers, in Los Angeles, California, U.S., March 22, 2021. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson/File Photo
By Julia Love
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – In June, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, one of the nation’s largest and most influential unions, vowed to make organizing the Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ:) workforce a top priority.
Two months later, details of the Teamsters’ ground game are starting to take shape, Reuters has learned from interviews with local union leaders. While organizing workers is the ultimate aim, the short-term strategy is one of disruption.
Over the past year, the Teamsters have raised concerns about Amazon at local government meetings in at least nine communities, leading to the scrapping of projects and the rejection of a tax break, as well as resolutions calling on the company to meet local labor standards, according to a Reuters tally.
From Fort Wayne, Indiana, to Oceanside, California, the Teamsters are popping up in city halls around the country, joining forces with community groups as they seek to persuade local officials to ask more of the tech giant or reject its expansion plans outright. They are training members at logistics companies on how to talk to Amazon drivers about the benefits of unionizing. In New York, the Teamsters weighed in on an antitrust bill passed by the state senate that would make it easier for regulators to pursue companies for anticompetitive conduct, and they have also backed antitrust bills in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Taken together, these early moves show the Teamsters are tapping into their network of more than 1 million members to take on Amazon at the local level. The escalating push suggests that while Amazon earlier this year fended off https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/amazon-union-drive-facing-long-odds-final-votes-counted-2021-04-09 an attempt by the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union to organize workers in Bessemer, Alabama, the fight with organized labor has only just begun, and it is being waged across the country.
Amazon did not respond to a request for comment.
The Teamsters are playing the long game, showing that while organizing Amazon workers is a long-term project, they can keep the company on its toes by challenging expansion plans in the meantime.
Most Amazon facilities “have to be built in a particular area for operational needs,” Randy Korgan, the Teamsters’ national director for Amazon, said in an interview. “Why would any community give anything away?”
Rather than holding votes supervised by the National Labor Relations Board, as the RWDSU did in Bessemer, the Teamsters have indicated they will seek to ratchet up pressure on Amazon through tactics such as community demonstrations, strikes and boycotts until the e-commerce giant is forced to deal with them.
GROUND GAME
With its vast, high-churn workforce, Amazon is viewed as one…